Pakistan says 11 IMF demands are part of ongoing reforms, not “new conditions”

ISLAMABAD: The Government of Pakistan on Sunday clarified that the 11 structural benchmarks under the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program are not “new conditions” but part of its ongoing reform agenda, according to a Finance Division press release.

The benchmarks, covering areas such as civil servants’ asset disclosures, anti-corruption reforms, tax strategy, power distribution privatization, and regulatory improvements, are extensions of reforms already underway, the government said.

The Finance Ministry emphasized that all measures reflect a phased, medium-term approach agreed with the IMF, aimed at strengthening Pakistan’s fiscal stability, governance, and business climate.

The statement highlighted that the EFF’s reforms are implemented step by step, with each review building on prior actions to ensure agreed policy objectives are achieved. Many of the latest benchmarks are derived from reforms already initiated by the government, rather than being newly imposed.

Key areas addressed in the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) include continued public disclosure of civil servants’ asset declarations, strengthening the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and provincial anti-corruption bodies, facilitating access to financial intelligence under Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) reforms, and improving remittance inflows, which increased 26% year-on-year from FY24 to FY25.

The government statement emphasised that the key areas included in the MEFP have been mischaracterised as “new conditions”.

The statement further stated that commitments to enhance the NAB’s effectiveness and independence, including coordination with provincial anti-corruption establishments, were agreed during earlier reviews and are a continuation of this commitment, rather than stemming from the Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment Report.

The Finance Ministry emphasized that these measures reflect the continuity, sequencing, and deepening of Pakistan’s agreed reform agenda under the IMF program, rather than the imposition of abrupt or unprecedented conditions.